


hello, my old country, hello

by aureithyns



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - USA, Gen, Road Trips, Texas, Utah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7900462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aureithyns/pseuds/aureithyns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking a cross-country road trip is complicated enough with two people, let alone nine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bahorel: basically the same as a miracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is for the birthday of PilferingApples earlier in August. 
> 
> title is from the song "Good Intentions Paving Company" by Joanna Newsom.

From Bahorel’s point of view, it is nothing short of a miracle that both Grantaire and Prouvaire are somehow asleep and quiet in the backseat - let alone that they have been for nearly three consecutive hours, especially as those three hours involved a sunrise, crossing a state line, and an extremely inopportune break in their group’s two-car caravan.

Frankly, it’s a miracle unheard of, and something that could easily be worth a (hushed) sermon of some kind were Lesgle in the vehicle.

He mentioned this fact some minutes ago to Combeferre, who took over the wheel in Louisiana and then turned out to be an adept driver when he wasn’t also trying to be a history lecturer, and earned a response of “or a very convenient coincidence” and a smile.

Which is basically the same thing as a miracle, and Combeferre definitely knows it.

During the unprecedented peace and quiet, he managed somehow to find a radio station that suited both of them - of course, they lost the signal very shortly after they exited the actual interstate, but Bahorel had to concede that it was impressive how peaceful driving with these people could be when only one of them had to agree with him on the music instead of three.

After the signal fuzzed out, they drove in silence, albeit with Combeferre occasionally tapping the steering wheel or dryly commenting on another driver’s road etiquette. Bahorel, on his own, managed to content himself with looking out the passenger side window - for a time, at least. Peace and quiet weren’t actually his strengths, even if he could casually enjoy them while riding shotgun.

Silence gets old quick, though.

“I lost my phone signal after Rusk and it ain’t back yet,” he says.

Combeferre, for all his eloquence, hums. They pass a mileage sign, and Bahorel manages to spot  _ Athens  _ and  _ Dallas  _ on it, but not the actual distance to either.

_ Backroad highways still awful then _ , he thinks. Combeferre, of course, is speeding anyway, but with no one else on the road, it’s not really an issue.

And it’s not like Bahorel himself doesn’t go ten over.

“So we should check your phone to see if the others have said something.”

The others who are probably at least thirty minutes ahead of them by now, very specifically because Joly had totally forgotten about the Rusk railway detour and Combeferre had remembered quite clearly.

“Oh,” says Combeferre, swerving slightly out of the way of someone else’s roadkill. “Glovebox.”

“Gotcha.”

The phone is on even after several hours without use, but luckily enough Combeferre has both a signal and battery power. The lock screen displays a photo message and recent texts from Courfeyrac:

**stay on 175 and yallll be fine. attached is pic Lesgle drew of the sign ^^^**

**big sign off the road saying truckers welcome. FYI its the only exit**

**stopped in La Rue at the station diner ! plz dont miss us**

as well as slightly older messages from Joly:

**Enjolras says we should stop somewhere soon! Also, I hope the train was cool!!!! =D**

**I’m really really sorry I passed the exit and we didn’t realize AHHH =( but Courfeyrac is driving now and we are on the highway 175**

He’s already seen the oldest one (it was sent prior to the untimely death of his phone).  As for Courfeyrac’s info: thank God for breakfast, and hopefully they were getting closer. Thankfully, the road isn’t all that crowded, and as Combeferre seems happy to go 95 miles per hour in an 85 speed limit area, Bahorel mentally insists that he doesn’t need to eat his hoarded granola bar if there’s a diner coming up. (Somehow, they’d all skipped breakfast in a hurry to leave Shreveport. His stomach is suffering for it now.)

“They’re at a diner in Larue,” he says to Combeferre. 

“We haven’t passed a sign for that, so be on the lookout.”

“‘Course.”

And then, silence.

The highway stretches in front of them, dusty, grey and brown bushes along the sides of the roads. He’s spent so much time looking out the window that it’s disconcerting to turn forward.

Bahorel closes his eyes, decides he doesn’t like that either, realizes being on the lookout means not falling asleep, and then opens them.

With the landscape getting to be more green, and with something to look for, it’s easier, at least, to look through the windshield without being the one driving. 

Then:

“Lookout for what?”

_ Miracle over _ , thinks Bahorel, and he greets Prouvaire and his sleepy voice by tossing the granola bar over his shoulder at him. Then he says, more loudly than he probably should when he needs Grantaire to please-not-wake-up, “good morning!”

The granola bar hits Prouvaire’s window with a  _ clunk _ .

Combeferre’s grip on the steering wheel tightens.

“I am awake,” Prouvaire announces, in the way that after years of friendship Bahorel can tell it’s supposed to be a novel piece of news. The news continues, albeit slow and quiet: “I dreamt of a metal behemoth caged in a field of wheat, bobbing its hulking, eyeless head like a buoy bound to earth, seeking salvation in the fields of golden grain, as an omnipresent voice of static noise ordered its submission.”

_ …okay _ .

“Good morning indeed,” Combeferre replies smoothly. “We’ll be stopping soon.”

“What time is it,” Prouvaire continues, except now with a tone of voice that’s less like that of a bewildered and hallucinating mouse and more like a human who’s nearly been hit in the head with a walnut-raisin breakfast item and is as such kinda annoyed about it.

“Almost nine. That’s quite the imagination you’ve got there,” says Combeferre, somehow not at all patronising, and before Bahorel can point the sign out, he’s putting on his turn signal to exit for the Larue diner.

Which is literally right off the highway, so they can see the other car in the parking lot a hop-skip away.

“Jesus,” Bahorel manages to say, after processing whatever kind of mental image Prouvaire had tried to describe. He slips out from under his own seatbelt and turns around to look at him directly; having officially woken up, Prouvaire now has his forehead pressed against the window. The thin blanket he’d been wearing like a ghost costume is now on Grantaire’s lap. “What kind of behemoth exactly?”

“An oppressed one. Dinosauric and afraid, a slave to its limitations.”

Barely audible, but Bahorel gets the gist: if there was anything else, it’s a secret for only the window.

Then everything clicks.

“…sure you didn’t just open your eyes a little while we drove through the oil fields?”

Combeferre snorts, the car slowing as he presses the brakes on the exit road. Behind Bahorel’s seat, Grantaire shifts and yawns.

And that makes the miracle officially over - luckily, the stop is ahead.

“Oil fields,” repeats Prouvaire, and he undoes his seatbelt as they turn on a short gravel road, stretching his arms to touch the ceiling of the car. Combeferre, undoubtedly hearing the click of the action, groans. As they pull into the parking lot of the truck stop, Bahorel turns back forward and undoes his own seatbelt, with the motivation of expressing that Combeferre doesn’t need to put safety first at 5 miles an hour.

But he can’t leave Prouvaire hanging.

“Jehan, we’re in East Texas, there are pumpjacks all over the -”

“Texas, by another name, hell…” - and that was Grantaire, fully awake and already rambling before they even stop moving.

“You’re from Galveston, you ass,” Bahorel responds, but the sound of the back doors opening drowns out whatever Grantaire says back.

“Everyone please get out,” Combeferre says, turning the key in the ignition, and then he opens his own door to follow through on that request himself.

Once both Prouvaire and Grantaire have put their shoes back on, sandals over socks for both of them, Bahorel follows on Combeferre’s lead. Somehow, Combeferre is already halfway across the parking lot, keys in hand.

A split-second later, though, they’re all back at the car: two wallets and an empty water bottle did not make it out before Combeferre locked the doors.

By the time they actually make it to the porch of the little diner, Combeferre is relaxed, Grantaire has stopped cursing the Lone Star State under his breath, and Prouvaire can both walk in a straight line and understand, to a degree, the function of a pumpjack. The latter of those things is a small victory in the name of fun facts and family business, but Bahorel isn’t too fond of claiming it - mostly because dystopian robots would have been a useful idea for both of them if they hadn’t turned out to be something he already knew the real-life ins and outs of.

They’ll probably come up with something later regardless.

Fortunately, all four of them make it inside just in time to see Enjolras, beside him a bedheaded and smiling Feuilly, speaking to a big-haired middle aged woman in an apron as he counts out his change. (“Florida? What a long drive!” “Yes it is, Ma’am, but we’re making good time” is all Bahorel catches.) 

On the other side of the diner, Lesgle is finishing up a story for Joly, Courfeyrac, and two truckers at a breakfast bar: “the poor guy didn’t realize there isn’t actually an interstate in Alaska!” - but he’s interrupted by Courfeyrac’s shout of “we saved you breakfast.”

Grantaire, thankfully kind-of smiling, heads immediately for the restroom; Combeferre heads for Enjolras and Feuilly, at least until Joly catches him to apologize about the railway attraction; and Prouvaire grabs Bahorel’s arm and drags him over to the corner to look at the taxidermied bullhead on the wall.

Even though they hadn’t actually planned the stop, it turns out to be a morale booster anyhow, especially with the knowledge of eight more hours on the road ahead of them.

And, the way Bahorel himself sees it, since he did get to have a solid three hours on the highway without instigating a fight over cassette tapes or roadside wonders, now knows way too much about the Texas State Railway, and somehow also gave a successful two-sentence explanation of oil drilling machinery to a sleepy and disappointed poet from Maryland, he has definitely earned his on-the-house hash browns and scrambled eggs.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: this chapter was updated and revised on 2016/12/09.


	2. Courfeyrac: all the national wonders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is for Alouettesque ♥
> 
> there will be nine chapters total, for obvious reasons. :) if you read the previous chapter a while ago, i recommend reading it again! it's undergone some (much needed) editing.

**sign 4 starbucks ?!?!?!?!?!?! enjolras needs to stop & i need coffee, we will take it** **  
** **PLZ follow we do NOT need to get separated again**

 _I doubt that it’s open on Sundays... there will be more food options in SLC, as planned. Can he wait for about an hour?_ _  
_ _Is everything okay?_

 **joly checked yelp & says ur doubt is misplaced :^)** **  
** **also enjolras is driving so…. lol no**

 _What? Why? I thought Feuilly was._ __  
_And yes, we’ll follow. Did Enjolras want to drive?_   
Courfeyrac?

Courfeyrac decides halfway through trying to write a text in response that it is not, in fact, worth it, and he puts his phone in his cup holder. It would be best to procrastinate that explanation until they weren’t separated by several miles. And after caffeine.

The backseat chargers are both taken by Lesgles, who deserves them because of his weird battery thing, and if his own phone dies then Courfeyrac is okay with that. There are only so many puzzle games one can play, and he’s pretty tired of the music he has… unfortunately, Enjolras is driving, which means the only listening material is Feuilly - somehow exuding nothing but patience - giving him freeway driving instructions.

Admirable, but unbearable. Joly and Lesgle, more bearably, are _kind of_ cuddling, but Courfeyrac is pretty sure he’d prefer that Feuilly drove and he had Enjolras to himself.

“People outside of Massachusetts like to use their turn signals,” says Feuilly, as they veer onto an exit ramp.

Courfeyrac hears the belated clicking sound, and smiles to himself.

“I’m not from Massachusetts, I only learned to drive there,” replies Enjolras, in a deliberate way that makes Courfeyrac think he’s doing that thing where he tries not to smile but ends up being extremely charming anyhow. (When they were in Texas, he ended up doing it around one of Bahorel’s cousins, and she was not the only one swooning. Courfeyrac knows _that face_ from when they talk politics, because Enjolras somehow manages to be inspired even when he has to listen to talk about the disaster that was the entrance of trickle-down economics in the Reagan presidency or the catastrophe that was John W. Snow’s appointment to treasury, or any other disastrous financial matter Courfeyrac can talk about for hours even though he usually hates the subject. Usually being, like, when Enjolras is not listening.)

“Believe me, we’ve noticed,” Lesgle quips, doing a bad-but-affectionate job of mimicking Enjolras’s resurfaced accent.

Feuilly laughs.

Joly’s knee bumps into Courfeyrac’s own as he shifts just slightly away from being in Lesgle’s lap, and for a moment everyone is silent.

“Combeferre said they would follow,” Courfeyrac says finally, as Enjolras makes a sharp turn onto a side road at Feuilly’s instruction.

On one side of the road is what’s _probably_ a church, because it has a steeple and the parking lot is crowded, and because it’s a Sunday morning Courfeyrac thinks that’s a logical assumption. On the other side is a small business complex that the GPS says harbors the Starbucks. Its parking lot is … way less crowded, and he starts to realize what Combeferre was getting at.

“Combeferre had no objections, then,” Enjolras says evenly - and New England-y. They turn into the business lot, and now that they’re officially off the freeway, everyone in the car can breathe again.

“Eh, well -”

“People _outside_ of Massachusetts...” starts Feuilly as the car bumps into the curb, and when Lesgle laughs, Courfeyrac can’t resist, either. (He will thank Feuilly for the timing of the interruption later.)

By the time they park, get out of the car, and check to make sure the place really is open, Courfeyrac sees the other car entering the parking lot. It’s not until after they’re each seated with their choice of beverage (Enjolras, bless him, asked for tap water) that the other four actually get out of their car.

And by that time, Lesgle has dropped his chai, Joly has sugared his own coffee twice, and Enjolras and Feuilly are having an impassioned discussion about what sounds like the meeting of two topics: drug legalization and the prison industrial complex.

This is typical, Courfeyrac thinks to himself, and he’s about to put his cappuccino down and join them by throwing out a number about the US prison labor economy when he hears a markedly different conversation come through the open door:

“I would prefer, actually, that if we’re going off of the freeway again, we see something other than that - literally anything else, to be honest -”

“What better to see than the opiate of the masses on steroids?”

“Dude, no one needs you to mix drugs.”

“Then Grantaire can go to stand across the street from the Temple, if he can behave himself, and the rest of us can continue to Yellowstone without him.”

“I will contentedly trade becoming bearfood for a selfie with the 11-foot Jesus, as long as Enj -”

“Hey! Combeferre is right. We should go to the Masonic lodge.”

“I didn’t mention the Mas -”

“Fuck, there’s a Masonic lodge?”

“We’re not going to the Masonic lodge, or to the Temple, either,” Joly says cheerfully, as he steps in front of Courfeyrac to hand Lesgle his replacement tea. “We’re going camping, with fresh air, and also with sunshine, and -”

“I agree,” Prouvaire says suddenly, as though he hadn’t just suggested that they go to the lodge. Biting back a comment, Courfeyrac sips at his drink. “The Freemasons are much too civilized for our purposes here.”

Both Combeferre and Bahorel look at him with way more fondness than Courfeyrac himself can muster.

“Can y’all just get something to drink so we can get back on the road?”

If anything, the comment increases tension, but it does get Bahorel, Grantaire, and Prouvaire over to the barista counter.

Combeferre sits down, instead, next to Enjolras and across from Feuilly.

With Joly and Lesgle totally disappeared, as they’ve taken to doing since New Mexico, and Feuilly back to being silent and pensive, the earlier conversation doesn’t seem like it will get back on track any time soon. Courfeyrac returns to nursing his cappuccino and observing with his mouth shut.

Enjolras, he notes, has his hand on Combeferre’s thigh.

“Sorry for this,” Courfeyrac says, more to his cup than the scene in front of him.

“It isn’t your fault,” replies Enjolras, otherwise unmoving. Combeferre briefly tilts his head against Enjolras’s shoulder before sitting upright again. “I ought to know how to drive on a highway by now.”

A beat.

Something in Courfeyrac’s chest flips over.

“If I had actually taken -”

Combeferre coolly interrupts him: “did you plan on explaining the situation at any point?”

He splutters for a moment, remembering the neglected text message, the fire-side discussion they had last night about _let’s at least make sure we don’t stop until Salt Lake._ He knows about the personal issues, doesn’t want to discount them or anything, but this is still a territory that Courfeyrac can’t yet successfully traverse.

That is, Combeferre as a person has way too much nuance for the cut and dry methods Courfeyrac uses to deal with things in general, from his housemates in Cambridge to the traffic in Baton Rouge, and it’s not exactly working anymore.

And setting aside all the national wonders they’ve seen, road trips are kind of a catalyst for burnout. This one is no different. Having gotten used to being the social butterfly, it’s a little weird to suddenly feel like the odd one out: Courfeyrac is slipping on how to handle everything.

He stares at Combeferre with his mouth half-open until Feuilly again comes to his rescue:

“If I wasn’t sick then no one would have needed to take over, either, but that’s... out of our control. Unfortunately. But, if you can drive on the way to Yellowstone, that’d be helpful.”

“You’re not feeling well?”

“Yeah. I think it was a migraine, but if it was I guess it was pretty short. Joly only had paracetamol, so...”

“Well, if you took it more than four hours ago...”

And so the pain meds shuffle begins, just in time for everyone else to sit down with drinks in hand.

Immediately, Courfeyrac finds himself squished between Prouvaire and Bahorel, both of whom are probably tired enough of being squished on each other that he can’t bring himself to be annoyed… even though they’re talking over him about something totally incomprehensible. He closes his eyes and leans back against the couch, letting his head rest uncomfortably over the edge.

After a few minutes he looks up only to discover that Enjolras, Combeferre, and Feuilly have totally stepped outside.

He finishes his cappuccino quickly - it’s probably a little too hot outside to take it - and excuses himself from his friends to go join them.

It is, indeed, warm outside. The other three look up when he leaves the Starbucks, but none of them seem unhappy to see him. He grabs the keys from Feuilly and stands around for a minute, listening to them talk. Enjolras gives him a look, murmurs a question: if he can take the front seat. Courfeyrac nods.

As much as he wants to actually say something, he ends up just sitting in the car, staring across the street. They’ll get back on the freeway in no time, he knows, but it’s easier to be impatient.

By the time everyone is back in their respective cars, he’s been itching to put his foot on the gas pedal.

They let the others go first, with the assumption - espoused by Lesgle - that they’ll still end up three hours behind and on the absolutely wrong route anyway. Joly creates a makeshift shade for Feuilly’s window, and Courfeyrac doesn’t touch the radio or the CD changer. Enjolras, sitting in shotgun, puts down the sunvisor.

When Courfeyrac touches Enjolras’s knee in what’s meant to be a “sorry I made you drive on the freeway” variety gesture, he gets a silent, familiar smile in return.

Whatever shifted in his chest earlier goes back to normal, and once they’re on the freeway, he’s doing 80 in seconds.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the open-Sundays Spanish Fork Starbucks is real, but I have never been to it.


End file.
